Bio:

Cornell was raised in a highly religious household in rural Arkansas. Church was attended twice weekly, at least, and readings from the Bible were compulsory. Because of this, or perhaps in spite of it, Cornell developed two notable skills: the ability to read and absorb dense and confusing texts, and a heightened sense of the spiritual and supernatural. It wasn’t long before he learned that the preachers were wrong. Not entirely; another world existed, spirits were very real and could be malevolent or benevolent, but God and Heaven and the Devil were fairy tales. He wasn’t sure HOW he knew this, he just kind of …did.

He began visiting the library that was near his school and was drawn to the books of the occult. This warranted tolerant smiles from the librarians of a child indulging in fantasy, but those looks transformed into wariness and aversion as time went on. An 8-year-old reading books on witches is charming; a 15-year-old investigating rituals is markedly less so.

Naturally, this was an interest his parents discovered, though how fast they discovered this was unsettling. These were books of the devil, and the devil had to be beaten out. Then, late at night when they thought he was asleep, they would fight about it. He overheard accusations of “He gets it from your blood” and “That little…‘buster’ will become a monster if we don’t drive it out.” He figured that “buster” was a substitute for “bastard” because swearing was wrong, but the talk about monsters made no sense.

High school was on the rougher side, but nothing to the levels that the movies would have you believe. With little desire to go to college, but even less to go back home, Cornell enlisted in the US Army. Structure, service to country, a steady paycheck, and time away from home would be good. It was one thing his parents seemed to approve of, at least. After training, he wound up in Fort Hood, TX where he was put to use as a general mechanic and achieved several years of successful work. Though precisely in the middle between Bumfuck and Nowhere, the remoteness didn’t bother Cornell. There was lots of space to work, Austin was a short drive away when he felt like being social, and plenty of open countryside when he wasn’t.

It was this open countryside that led to his first change. While enjoying the night sky off post one night, he was assaulted by what was the largest coyote (he thought) he’d ever seen. In his own mind, he managed to drive the beast off after it only got one good bite. He immediately returned to post to have the medical staff treat the wound, but that was just the beginning of a long, hallucination-filled night and an even longer week of restlessness and delusions, something that was not unnoticed by his sergeants.

Cornell was recommended for a psych eval, and in what was surely the most spectacular display of military efficiency that had ever existed, he was given a general discharge in a matter of weeks due to mental health issues as a result of stress from military life. Distraught, he returned home to parents that were less than pleased in their son who wasn’t even able to complete a full tour of duty. It wasn’t two days before the fights began, accusations flew, and his father, at the prompting of his mother, felt that the devil had taken up residence and needed to be beaten out yet again.

After the first blow, something snapped in Cornell. A rage he had never felt rose to the surface that these pitiful bald apes would dare try to harm him. He reared up, taller than he thought should be physically possible and watched their eyes go wide with disbelief. Eyes that went red when his claws ripped them out. Red that spread when his fangs began tearing into flesh.

When dawn broke, Cornell was nude, his clothes ripped to shreds, and covered in blood. There were people in his living room, surveying the carnage with an almost academic dispassion. They didn’t seem like law enforcement, but their presence and timing was unnerving. A stocky man with a beard approached Cornell and extended his hand. “I’m Ralph, an Uratha of the Hirfathra Hissu, the Bone Shadows. We need to get you cleaned up and on the road. There’s a lot we need to go over.”

Tribe and Auspice
Ralph’s education began by laying a foundation with the Bone Shadow’s oath from the Death Wolf, Kamduis-Ur: Pay each spirit in kind. Cornell was able to grasp this concept with great ease as it echoed many of the religious lessons he’d been brought up with. “Neither a borrower nor lender be”; “Give unto Cesar what is Cesar’s”; and, a favorite of many in his church though few would openly admit to it, “An eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.”
Being an Ithaeur was fortunate, according to Ralph, as the Crescent Moon lent wisdom to those wolves, and wisdom is important when dealing with the spirit world, much more important than strength or intelligence. Wisdom was necessary to know not only what spirits to work with, but how to work with them. Is this human ghost malevolent, or merely frightened? Does that spirit of predation deserve relocation or elimination? When you promise to give a Ridden the knife it desires in exchange for information, do you deliver it to its hand or it’s throat?
Being both an Ithaeur and a Bone Shadow, Ralph taught, can lead a werewolf to become a seer among seers. This idea filled Cornell with no small amount of pride, and thus he gave Ralph his full attention under his tutelage.

Cornell’s Ride
2013 Yamaha Bolt, a budget cruiser that gets the job done. A few contemporary bells and whistles such as a digital speedometer, LED lights, and cruise control keep it from being a true hog, but if Cornell is a bit off from the standard werewolf, why not the bike as well?